Weeknote #28 (20250330-20250405)
meta
We’ve entered the frustrating part of the spring time where we’ll get a day or two of just absolutely gorgeous weather …followed by several days of rain. I’m really ready for the sustained nice weather to get here…
did
- Had a couple chats with folks at Willamette about their Masters of Data Science program, which I’m considering starting (part time) in the fall
- At work, I got the web stuff I’ve been working on pushed up, in a couple different chunks. I think/hope this is the last big chunk of work on this project, and the remaining bits will be easy to port over because all the bigger, more complicated components have been ported already. We’ll see…
- Also work-related: spent a fair amount of time reading “Genome modeling and design across all domains of life with Evo 2”, which was interesting
- Took Friday off and got my second shingles vax dose. I was again mostly side-effect free, although I did wake up around 2 or 3am Saturday morning with chills …was fine in the morning
- Saturday I rode my bike down to the Salem “Hands Off” protest — it was great to see a sizable crowd out in Salem!
- Saturday evening, we had some friends over for dinner and watched the (pretty underwhelming) Timbers match
exercise & shoulder recovery
- Sunday: morning shoulder stretches
- Monday: morning shoulder stretches; afternoon gym (shoulder work, EZ-bar curls, Bulgarian split squats)
- Tuesday: morning shoulder stretches
- Wednesday: morning shoulder stretches; deferred gym to tomorrow
- Thursday: morning shoulder stretches; afternoon gym (shoulder work, deadlifts, Zottman curls)
- Friday: skipped everything, for no good reason
- Saturday: morning shoulder stretches followed by a 9 mile bike ride in the afternoon — should have hit the gym, but treated myself to another rest day instead
My arm ended up pretty unhappy after that bike ride, which I think is the third time in a row that a longer bike ride has aggrevated the biceps part of my rotator cuff injury. Sadly, I made need to confine myself to shorter rides (assuming those don’t also cause problems)
read
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Programming has long suffered from the myth of the “rockstar”. Silicon Valley techbro culture loves this notion.
In reality, though, modern information systems are far too complicated for a single person. Developing systems is a team sport. Nontechnical, and technical-adjacent, skills are vital: clear but friendly communication; obtaining and incorporating the insights of every member of your team; willingness to be challenged. Community building. Collaboration. Governance.
The hardcore C community embraces the rockstar myth: they imagine that a few super-programmers (or super-reviewers) are able to spot bugs, just by being so brilliant. Of course this doesn’t actually work at all, as we can see from the atrocious bugfest that is the Linux kernel.
These “rockstars” want us to believe that there is a steep hierarchy in programmming; that they are at the top of this hierarchy; and that being nice isn’t important.
Sound familiar?
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This starts to get into why I’m writing these:
Working in the open means that whatever I’m trying to do is far more likely to happen, or that my inchoate thoughts are more likely to be turned into action by somebody else. I’ve been at it for my entire adult life, and don’t intend to stop. Recommended.
watched
- Finished The Wire S1 and started in on S2
cooked
- Monday: thai basil chicken
- Tuesday: cheese enchiladas with black beans — unfortunately ended up too spicy for everybody except me
- Wednesday: sausages & peppers
- Thursday: garlic-jalapeño shrimp tacos with roasted tomato-tomatillo salsa
looking forward to
Did I mention I was ready for the nice weather?